‘Walking Dead’ Season 8 Will Have Less Character-Centric Episodes

It’s tough to say whether The Walking Dead is set in its ways, or might surprise us in Season 8’s “All Out War.” Either way, at least one notable tweak is in order, as showrunner Scott Gimple says Season 8 will address a long-running fan complaint over the series’ pacing.

Now that war has finally broken out between Rick, Negan, Ezekiel, Maggie, Jadis and all their respective groups, The Walking Dead Season 8 may not have time for the same character-centric episodes that tend to populate half-seasons. The all-encompassing nature of the conflict gave showrunner Scott Gimple cause to rethink episodes that focus on one small group at a time; telling Entertainment Weekly Season 8 will have a bit more momentum behind it:

By virtue of the fact that the narrative has turned into one of pretty intense conflict, it’s going to affect the structure in ways that make it a bit more kinetic, a bit more breakneck — shifting away from entire stories in one episode, and sort of fractured over several episodes, with little pieces of each story coming together. […]

We knew the way that 7 was going to be structured, and we knew we wanted to mix it up in 8, and we knew what 8 was going to be and how that would dictate a very different kind of structure anyways. So, yeah, things are going to move, and possibly not have the kind of deep dives into characters in single episodes, but rather laying out the pieces as we go on.

That’s good and bad news for disgruntled fans of the long-running AMC series, as while one-off episodes of certain characters have provided stronger hours of the series, others have often felt like uneventful stalls of the main storyline. If indeed Season 8 plans to barrel through conflict for all major factions, it might make sense to keep self-contained episodes to a minimum.

There remains the question of whether The Walking Dead Season 8 will shut down production over the looming Writers Strike, but in the meantime, stay tuned for details of the coming 100th episode.